Calling your bluff
by Juulna
Summary: [INFINITY WAR SPOILERS] [Pepperony break-up, pre-slash Stony] [Post-CA:CW, Pre-IW] Pepper can't quite handle what Tony's done to his body... and Tony knows it. But Pepper also knows something more that Tony hasn't quite allowed himself to acknowledge. Not since Siberia. Something about him and Steve...


**Note: DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU WANT INFINITY WAR SPOILERS!**

 **I just... I don't even know why, but I had to get this out? It's a weird one to strike at me, but I needed to write after seeing IW before I could sleep (still haven't yet), and I switched to this in the middle of writing a more traditional... post-canon(? can we call it that?) fic.**

 **Anyway. Pep and Tony just never sat well with me (after Iron Man 3, I must add because of some dick guest reviewer - I do still love them together theoretically), I'm sorry. So here is my little fix to that, plus exploring how I _really_ think Pepper (and Tony) would react to Tony doing... this to himself.**

* * *

"Pepper, I had to do this."

"No, you just thought… _think_ you had to do it," Pepper chastised Tony gently, but still with that hint of sharpness that made her… his Pepper.

Not anymore, however.

Tony Stark had finally taken that step too far for Pepper. She'd been able to get over the superhero business even after Siberia, but maybe that had been him projecting onto her. Maybe he had wanted that sense of normalcy so badly after Siberia, maybe she had wanted to care for him and show him people _cared_ for him so much after Siberia, that they had both sort of trapped themselves into this air of seeming normalcy after he'd healed. After he'd started to clean up.

Nothing major had happened, and so there he was… clinging to what he'd had before, clinging to the only remaining people he had left in his life.

And then the nightmares had come. Again.

That's when he knew they would be over. Finished. Kaput.

He wasn't sure what had staid the nightmares off for the month or so that he'd been given a reprieve of, but when they had come again… they had spared nothing. He'd been able to handle it like usual—by ignoring it—for quite a number of months, but then it had worn on him, and he hadn't been able to avoid the suggestions crawling about his brain.

And so the nanites had been born.

They'd always been a project—well, not _always_ , but they had been ever since Extremis had given him the idea for them. He had immediately regretted removing his arc reactor after the events with A.I.M. and had been looking for something, something that he could create, manipulate, control, that would help to protect him against external threats. He'd known then that he'd never be able to give up Iron Man, even before the first suit had exploded in the sky above his and Pepper's heads.

He'd been lying to himself.

He'd been lying to _Pepper_ , and for that he could hardly forgive himself.

But perhaps it was for the best.

Tony grabbed hold of Pepper's hands, both of them within both of his, and said, "Yes, I absolutely had to do this, Pepper. I _know_ this was the right thing to do. I'm not young anymore. My heart still isn't perfect— _wasn't_ perfect. My suits wouldn't have protected me forever, not like they used to, and Siberia proved that. I may seem like I'm trying to protect myself from constructs, from _nightmares_ about what happened… and maybe I am; maybe I am a little bit. Maybe I am a _lot_ ," he allowed. "But I also know that the world _needs me_. And I need the world to need me, I'm not ashamed to admit that." He added solemnly, keeping his voice level and his eyes steady as he caught her gaze.

"Pepper, I'll always love you, and you'll always love me. But you deserve better than me. I tried for you. I tried twice. More than twice. Numerous, _countless_ , times I tried to be the man that you deserved; the man who could come home to you at night, or whom you could come home to after a long and tiring day at work. The man who could rub your feet, go on walks with you, feed the birds… But I couldn't do that. I couldn't even be the R&D to your CEO anymore, Pep, and you know it. You knew it then, but you hid it, because you wanted it to work just as much as I did."

"But Pep," Tony said as he reached up and titled her face more fully towards him. "Pep, you'll always be the love of my life. I just can't… I can't be that man for you. And you can't be that woman… that partner for me. Not in that sense. You can't accept everything I am, and we both know that. We've known that for a long time. But it doesn't mean that we don't love each other any less. It just means we need to take steps to protect our hearts from what all this means, and that means… that means we can't be what each other deserves." He sighed, releasing her chin with the one hand, and dropping her hands from his other. "Sometimes we love so much that it _hurts_ , and that's us, Pepper. That's us."

They were silent for a long, thoughtful minute. Perhaps even two. Tony wasn't even sure anymore.

"You need to call him—you know that, don't you?" Pepper finally asked, softly, into the silence.

"Yeah, Pep, I know," Tony sighed immediately, reflexively. They'd been over it many times already, Pepper always in favor of ending the enmity between the two of them.

She always had been, even at Steve's worst. Even at Tony's worst.

Pepper had more often than not been the voice of reason, and it was time he listen to her. At least on something that wasn't… well, at least on this.

He couldn't trust himself to remain impartial anymore.

"Tony," Pepper responded, even more seriously than before. "You need to _call_ him. He's… he's been waiting for you. In a way I no longer can."

In a… what?

"What do you mean, Pepper?" Tony asked, incredulity starting to seep into his tone. Surely she didn't mean… but… what _else_ could she mean?

"You're a genius, Tony. Figure it out." Pepper stood and then bent forward delicately in order to press a chaste and gentle kiss to Tony's lips. "Just like you figured out your nanites, and how to protect yourself. How to protect Earth in the wake of the Accords. You'll figure it out."

And then she left him in a cloud of expensive floral perfume, with a burner phone pressed tightly into the palm of his hand.

Tony stared at it, and stared, and _stared_.

And then he opened it and, unhesitatingly, pressed _dial_.

It was time to finish this, once and for all.

… whatever _this_ might be.

Tony shivered, and this time it was _not_ because of the nanites working on his still-unused-to-them body.

 _This_ might be something Tony wasn't ready to figure out. _This_ might be something too hard to work on.

… _This_ might be something that was _worth_ fighting for.


End file.
